Torch - Fall 2016

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FALL 2016 • TORCH 19
when she arrived here in Grade 7 is now
something she identifies as a source for her
own confidence. “Everyone’s open, so you
can express whatever you want. You can
express your own opinions and no one’s
going to say anything,” says Ng.
She credits her friends at Havergal with
helping to make her laugh and calm her
down. She likes the idea of Havergal’s new
hashtag campaign, because she agrees that
there can be a lot of pressure on girls her
age, especially around topics like body
image and the pressure that girls face
of constantly comparing themselves
to others.
Also in the Upper School, Megan Stellato
is a Grade 12 student, one of the Middle
School Prefects and an accomplished
athlete who made the Canadian National
Junior Women’s Rowing Team to compete
at the CanAmMex regatta this summer.
Showing an early independent streak,
Stellato applied to Havergal without telling
her parents, who only found out when
they heard about an interview. “I was like,
‘Sorry, forgot to tell you!’ Havergal had
always been my dream school,” recalls
Stellato. Arriving in Grade 9, she says her
intuition was confirmed from the start. “I
just got such a special feeling here and I
still do every day,” she says. Being bullied
early on at her previous school was an
experience that Stellato says made her lose
all of her confidence, which gave her even
more of an appreciation for the warmth
she found at Havergal.
Stellato identifies her role on the Rowing
team as coxswain as a major source for
her own confidence today. “A coxswain
is a small person who sits in the boat and
yells at the people much taller than her,”
explains Stellato. “For that job, you need
a lot of confidence, you need the ability to
tell people exactly what to do and when,
even though it makes you uncomfortable.”
Real Confidence: A
Video Made by Our
Students
By now you may have seen Havergal’s
Real Confidence video, posted on YouTube
in late April. It features a cool message
about girls finding the courage to problem
solve and asks the key question “What
if all it takes to change the way girls
respond to challenges is to change the
way that we respond to girls?”
But the story behind how it was made is
even cooler.
After filming Upper School student Jade
Crenian acting out the video, Havergal’s
advertising agency Red Lion created
stills and had every student in the school
trace them, adding whatever colours and
outside designs they wanted. So literally
every student had a hand in animating it.
Matthew Litzinger, President and Chief
Creative Officer of Red Lion, marvels at
its creation. “What better way for a school
to illustrate how much they believe in the
growth in their student body than to hand
over the execution to that student body?”
The video was promoted on YouTube,
Facebook and Instagram and garnered
more than 90,000 views. To view it, visit
Continued
Talia Ng wears her Gold 2015 Junior Pan Am medal with pride.